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This is my first time posting to the BT forums, but I'm a big fan of BT, so I figured I'd make my first post a contribution (albeit a small one); rather than a question.

Personally, I liberally send many files to the Trash (highlighting a file and then pressing just "delete") to keep my desktop environment organized, but the files on hand incase I deleted something important. After a while, I want to get ride of all those files securely. So, here is what I use for securely erasing my trash.

To get situated, open a terminal and cd to your root directory:

Code:

cd~

(Optional)
STEP 1: Upgrade to the latest version of scrub.

First, we'll upgrade to the latest version of scrub -- the program we'll be using to sanitize the contents of our files. This program is already included in BT, but this will get us the latest version.

Code:

wget http://diskscrub.googlecode.com/files/scrub-2.4.tar.bz2

Verify checksum -- always a good measure.

Code:

sha1sum scrub-2.4.tar.bz2

Output:

Code:

1065cde68549cd8b013f2b82bc5bb24922010da7 scrub-2.4.tar.bz2

Install it. Since BT has scrub already installed in the default directory, there is no custom configuration necessary.

What this script will do is, sanitize the entire contents of all files within your two Trash directories (i.e.: .../Trash/files/ & .../Trash/info/) using Roy Pfitzner's 33-random-pass method. Arguable, the most secure, but also most unnecessary of the popular algorithms. You're sacrificing time by using this method, so I suggest you pick which one is right for you. Just replace "pfitzner33" with one of the following:

UPDATE: I changed the default algorithm to nnsa instead of pfitzner33 -- pfitzner33 took ridiculously long with a typical sized trash. You can always change it though

Next, it will grab all files AND sub-directories from the above-two directories and rename them to a random string that's 4 characters in length. It will also move them all into .../Trash/files/. Then, it uses a simple recursive remove to free up all the space from disk.

Your trash will be completely sanitized after running it, and both Trash sub-directories (files & info) will remain intact.

STEP 3: Cleanup

Move it somewhere safe so you don't accidentally execute it by accident.

Personally, I'll hide it from the desktop environment in the root directory.